We don’t score reviews at Rock Paper Shotgun. Some might tell you this is because we view numeric scores as stifling oversimplifications of the wonderful, strange, and personal experiences videogames can offer, but it’s really because the refurbished work keyboards we’re assigned when hired all have their number keys gummed up with Marmite and none of us want to touch them.
I have scored games in the past, however. Pay attention, because I’m about to divulge a tale of corruption so vile and petty that I fear my career will never recover: I have, on occasion, reluctantly docked 0.2% of a point from a game’s review score for being awkward to alt+tab out of so I can take notes. I will not apologise. This is an accessibility feature. It’s vital that I can access my notes doc at all times, lest I fail to capture some choice impression like “more like ASSassin’s Creed: BOREigins lmao lol”.
I’ve just today found out that Steam added a feature a year ago that lets you pull up a notepad from the overlay tab and jot down thoughts, and I’ve only found out because a new update lets you now access these notes from the web (cheers, PC Gamer). People are apparently chuffed about it! My first thought was “how is this useful to anyone except me specifically?”. Then I remembered those blank sections you’d sometimes get in the back of game manuals. Then I thought about recent games like Lorelei And The Laser Eyes or even Suikoden I & II HD Remastered. There are thankfully still games that embrace notetaking, and this feels like a reasonably untaxing feature on Steam’s end.
There are, I’m discovering, plenty of other use cases. “I wish we could add notes to games on the wishlist. I have so many games that I’ve added over the years and can’t remember why,” Redditor bugfix00 writes.
Other redditor Madnesis adds: “Trying to paste a screenshot into my notes while using the Steam overlay would result in pasting a “⍰” instead of the actual screenshot. Man, I’m so glad I got a workaround but would have appreciated it sooner – so I could’ve saved all those STALKER 2 artifact spots in my notes Steam notes directly.”
Alongside the web notes feature, the latest Steam beta update also offers “improved display of notifications for in-progress achievements,” in big picture mode, a fix to Monster Hunter Wilds video recording, and support for the 8BitDo Micro gamepad – a tiny lozenge of a controller that looks fun to own but awkward to use, especially if you just had to type ‘8’ and now have Marmite on your fingers.